"Although I speak from my own experience, I feel that no one has the right to impose his or her beliefs on another person. I will not propose to you that my way is best. The decision is up to you. If you find some point which may be suitable for you, then you can carry out experiments for yourself. If you find that it is off no use, then you can discard it." Dalai Lama...

Monday, 15 February 2010

Milly's birthday week,including a marathon story telling day!

Milly decided against having a party this year,choosing to put the money we would have spent on a party towards decorating her room. We have a family get together at my Mums on Valentines day and a special day planned for her actual Birthday on the 16th.
Her friends are both away for her birthday and were unable to come for a sleepover together so she has had two!

Her teenage friend Emily(nickname Tom to ease confusion!) came on Wednesday.During home ed group they went off into town and Tom bought them some stickers and cola and sweets.They had been planning it on MSN and Milly had bought a couple of notebooks that they were going to decorate.They did that and had a makeup and hair session as well as watching a film.Tom made it a nice evening for her and they both slept in the new room.

We took Tom home at lunchtime and then came back walked Beauty and I expected Emily to collapse but she walked Beauty again with Al when he got home.

Emily and I were due to go to the cinema on Friday to see the new Hayao Miyazaki film Ponyo .For some reason our local Cinema was not screening it so we decided to have the day at home and as it turned out it I needed the rest.See previous post!

Milly and best friend A had a sleepover ,well I say sleep,not too much of that was had! It was after 2.30 when they got to sleep and Emily set her phone alarm for 8.30 so they could have time together before they left at 11 to go swimming with Al.
They swam for an hour and a half and then after lunch walked round Keswick.

In the car Milly carried on a story she had been telling A the night before.It was a ghost story but if A got scared when she was telling it in the night she added funny bits in to lighten it for her.A (who is a bookworm of the first order!) was mesmerised by the story and in stitches at the funny parts.

During the journey A(who goes to school) asked Emily "how do you know all those big words?"
Emily said "well I read a bit and Mum and Dad read to me and I listen to story tapes a lot ,so I guess that's how!"
Later on in the story A asked Emily what inconsolable meant and Alan said that Emily gave her a very good explanation very quickly.

Storytelling is what Emily does.She thinks in chapters and when she is appearing to do "nothing" bathing for ages or out on her hammock,she will come in and tell us she reached chapter 12 in the new story she was creating.
She tells her story without hesitation, never having to stop and think about it.The stories often "wander" and loose direction. Slowly, over time, they are getting better and better in both content and structure,and even some punctuation thrown in when she does write them down:-)

For the latest story idea,as with so many in the past she has a notebook with all the characters details and book titles (this latest story is part a series of books) and chapter titles in.Every time she starts one it is with excitement and enthusiasm.
She sometimes starts to write a story out or type it on the laptop but most of the time it is all verbal and not recorded in any way.

Although I don't think she is overly bothered about them being recorded I do occasionally offer to type for her,she always says no. She is not using her dictation machine as much either. If she did want a written record of it, I think her ideal would be for her to be able to do it herself.I am going to look into voice recognition software. The little info I have gathered about it wasn't too positive. I will do more research.I wouldn't want to get it and for her to get all excited and then be let down ,as this might knock her back.

I often think about how different things would have been for her at school and was comparing what she does in such a free and easy way to what she would have to do in lessons.She would have "had" to write down a story,to have an end product that could be marked .Added to the difficulty she would have found in writing it down it would also be on a topic she may not have had any interest in (Milly is passionate about her stories and characters.)
Any joy would have been eaten away by having to use punctuation or cursive writing .The whole process would have sucked her dry.I have no doubt in my mind that her appetite for storytelling would have died.

I was thinking back to when I used to help out with craft activities at play groups and then at Milly's school. All the bits of the flower ( or whatever the teacher had decided the children would do ) were pre cut.There was a finished article for the children to see how it should look.The children were encouraged to do it in a certain way, using certain colours,they were " helped" to make theirs look like the model and the end products from 30 individuals varied little.
It was the same for any written topic as well,subject matter chosen by someone else, with certain facts that had to be included.The same end product with little variation.

If Emily continues with her love of stories (would be strange if she didn't, as her whole life so far has been about them) I know she will continue to master the structure and grammar and all those other things because she will want to.At the moment we have many notebooks with a bit of a story in or a character list or drawings of characters in.There are a couple of finished articles but at the moment they are not what is important to Emily,it is the process she loves.

I am not worried, I have no fear that she is wasting her time and will never write anything down.I have the evidence of her growth over the past three years.She has moved on herself,with no lessons,no set work,no spelling tests.She tells stories,writes poetry,talks about how a scene from "her book" would look as a film,what music might be used for a particular scene.We read,we talk,we watch TV,we listen to story tapes,we live life,get out and about and follow things that interest us,we have fun.

We don't have "work" to show for all this,there are no neatly packaged end products.We do however have a daughter who is an avid storyteller,who is happy and whole and in her element being able to follow her hearts desire whenever the mood takes her.I know which one I would rather have:-)

Added by Emily who read the end of this while I was making us a cuppa:-)
(i am now writing shadow dancer by milly bamber) (copywrite)

Milly's Justgiving page for Little Princess Trust.

Milly's Facebook Charity Page

Milly's Charity Blog

Milly's JustGiving Page for Cancer research

We are on a journey....

After taking our daughter out of school we decided on an autonomous approach and set off full of hope. The journey so far has not always been easy - but it has been worth it. We have our happy, funny, loving daughter back again. It also seems possible this unconventional way of living will change our lives for ever. Would you like to join us on the journey as we grow and learn more about unschooling and what it means for us?

Reclaiming our life.

Ebay account

When I set about creating this blog The title and blog description just came to me one night.It simply flowed without thought at all.Many months later I discovered John Holt and this quote!!

"A life worth living and work worth doing - that is what I want for all children." - John Holt.

This is me.....

There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you.” Stacey Charter.

Kindness

"This is my simple religion.There is no need for temples; no need for complicatedphilosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." The Dalai Lama.

Karma...

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” Wayne Dyer

A collection of quotes....

Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit... Robert Brault.

'You can't give what you don't have,' some people say, and if you want your children to give generosity and kindness and patience to others, you should give them so much they're overflowing with it. ** —Sandra Dodd

Why we Home educate

( Slightly edited from a blog post I did when we started out) In the end the actual decision to take Emily out only took a matter of days but before that it had been around a year and a half of talking about ti and reading books, Free range education by Terri Dowty, Educating your child at home by Jane Lowe and Alan Thomas were two that had a real impact for different reasons. Free range education has lots of examples of real life home educators and I think I can say that it was this one that convinced me the most that we could do it.We are two very average people ,neither of us left school with many qualifications, we went on to do quite well in our chosen professions and had no need to think about the education system at all until Emily came along.I knew about home education and when Emily was born considered it as an optionbut always felt my lack of education would be a problem and that I wouldn't be capable of providing her with what she would need.Looking back with hindsight it is easy to see how wrong I was!!

School never really suited Emily......After the nursery year at a very highly rated, high achieving school we knew that particular School wasn't for us and took her out. We enrolled her in a lovely village school with only 70 children in the whole school .The ethos of the school was totally different, the children didn't wear uniforms and there was much more emphasis on the children being individuals.The head was a sensitive and principled man who wanted the best for the children. We thought we had struck gold.Over the reception and year 1 Emily gained confidence and really started to bloom. It was at this time she was diagnosed with dyspraxia( we had had to go down the diagnosis route as our observations of Emily's difficulties were not enough to enable the teachers to tailor things so she was helped and given less work in class) but she managed quite well in the more relaxed play orientated early years.Year 2 with more emphasis on academic activities got progressively harder for her. She is very sensitive and it wasn't just the academic side it was the embarassment of having to put her hand up for the toilet,seeing others being told off and worrying in case she did something wrong and got the same treatment, panicking because she couldn't do the work and the teacher never had time to sit with her (alot of this did not come out until she had left school) her behaviour at home became worse and worse she was so angry and obviously stressed . At this time we began to seriously consider taking her out but held back because of my lack of confidence in my ability to provide her with an adequate education ,my health being so poor was also a major stumbling block.

Then in year three it became blatantly obvious that something needed to change .She was struggling on all levels and we couldn't allow the school system to damage our daughter anymore.She became ill with a bug that was doing the rounds and she was off for two weeks , during that time I had a conversation with a friend who home educates her two children and I was so upset I couldn't make a decision and she said just go with whats in your heart and that really helped me to shift my thinking and stop worrying about what I couldn't give her and focus on what I could give her.

We never sent her back.I still get emotional when I think of that time , the look on Emily's face when we told her she would never have to go back to school was priceless,the immense sense of relief that we were off the treadmill of school life and the excitement of the time ahead and to be honest the fear of the unknown......

So here we are four years on and a lot of reading and researching later I feel comfortable with what we are doing . The changes that have happened so far have been helped along the way by the many wonderful blogs out there.They are so varied and there are so many different approaches , I have found ones that I can identify with and have read a lot of archive material that has been written in each and found answers to so many of the questions I have had that they have helped me to sort out what will work best for us .As much as I wish we had done this earlier and saved Emily from the distress that she went through I do believe things happen for a reason and that the time was right for us to take her out and that looking on the bright side one of the benefits is that at least she has had a taste of school and now we all know without a doubt that it is not for us !!!!

It is very liberating to be making decisions based on what works best for us as a family and not what society expects.

About Me

Life really did begin for me at 40! 39 to be precise, when Emily was born ;-).I have been married very happily for 25 years to Alan.I am gradually recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome after 12 years and we are home educating our Twelve year old daughter Emily.Whole life Unschooling is the label I would use to help others understand the way we home educate.In practice that means that Emily has free choice to do what she finds interesting at any given time.We believe that learning happens all the time,in her own way and at her own pace and we aim to provide her with things that are interesting and fun for her to do,but accept if she chooses not to do them.We have moved away from set bedtimes and restrictions on food.With our guidance she is learning to listen to her body.Still working on it and by no means "there" yet but enjoying the journey and the unexpected benefit has been the growth Alan and I have gone through having to challenge our thinking about educational/parenting methods.It's all good and getting better by the day.

Home ed group today.We actually managed to get to it this week!! It has been AGES since we made it to a meet up with the group - various rea...

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves."Buddha

I found this at the bottom of my Blog and decided I like it so much it needed to be somewhere I can see it daily ;-))Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in, broadside, thouroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly shouting, 'WOW'.... Beth Moore.

petal

created for me by milly

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A few qoutes I like....

Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in, broadside, thouroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly shouting, 'WOW'.... Beth Moore

The perpetual testing of public school children is like a gardener constantly pulling his plants up by the roots to see if they are growing....(unknown)

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instuction...Helen Kellers teacher

I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand...Confusious